Ida Wyman Photographer - In case you missed it (Link added)

Post- war America on display in rarely seen photos taken by an female | Daily Mail Online

Sandy, thanks for sharing. She truly is the "best photographer I never heard of.":)

I add my thanks too for sharing this link. I never heard of her and I enjoyed looking at her work and I found it interesting. But, I don't see the same quality in these photographs that I do in those of other street photographers, e.g. Vivian Maier, Garry Winogrand, etc. I have a feeling there are better photographers out there that I've never heard of, if not then that explains why we've never heard of her.

I add my thanks too for sharing this link. I never heard of her and I enjoyed looking at her work and I found it interesting. But, I don't see the same quality in these photographs that I do in those of other street photographers, e.g. Vivian Maier, Garry Winogrand, etc. I have a feeling there are better photographers out there that I've never heard of, if not then that explains why we've never heard of her.

 

Those presented in the tabloid vary considerably - the usual contest between an excellent photo and those lesser ones that are celebrity based or at a nexus point in time we can never revisit. When schedule allows, I'll do a bit of research to primary sources and post additional links.

'Unlike many street photographers, she'd always introduce herself to her subjects and ask to take their photographs. If they said yes, she'd do it. She'd come and observe them again and again. She didn't pose them. Because of that, she captured their genuine expressions,' said Martha Glowacki, former director of the in Watrous Gallery in Madison, Wisconsin where Wyman was the subject of a solo exhibition in 2014

 

What a novel idea

Neat post.

Very interesting, the kind of work I enjoy but so often can’t find.

 

Rick H.

Interesting to see her with a Kodak Medalist and a Contax - although many of the pictures are in square format.

Thanks. Great article and some very good pictures. I love to discover photographers that I have never heard of before. We are lucky that their work has been saved.

Some more Link ida wyman photographer - Google Search

From Ida Wyman, Chords of Memory, Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters:

While she began as a maker of individual images, Wyman often conceived of her photojournalistic projects as 'picture stories' rather than as individual images. And, like her predecessor, Lewis Hine, she envisioned multiple photographs of a subject or situation as the means to most effectively achieve the project’s narrative function.

 

Members of the New York Photo League were known for their progressive politics. While the group initially sought to use photography to challenge issues such as racial inequality, war, and poverty, their focus turned more toward experimental aesthetics over time. During the Red Scare the League was targeted and was blacklisted in 1947. With a dwindling membership, it was forced to disband in 1951. Nonetheless, the League remains widely lauded today for its invaluable contributions to documentary photography.

 

"I considered myself a documentary photographer, and the New York Photo League’s philosophy of honest photography appealed to me. I also began to understand the power of photographs to help improve the social order by showing the conditions under which many people lived and worked. Even after leaving the League the following year, I continued to emphasize visual and social realities in my straightforward photographs."

 

It’s important to note that women were vital contributors to the Photo League, comprising approximately one-third of the membership and serving in key roles within the organization. Columbus Museum of Art curator Catherine Evans emphasizes the uniqueness of the League in this regard: “Most significantly, the women of the Photo League were prolific and prominent artists working in documentary photography at a time when the arts, criticism, social commentary, and indeed most other professional fields still belonged largely to men.”

 

Though Wyman was a member for just two years—she left because she was increasingly busy with magazine assignments—her alignment with the aims of the Photo League is apparent in her work. She shared with other members a photographic vision shaped by a common background and social location. Art curator Mason Klein writes in an essay from The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951 that “what distinguishes the League’s treatment of photography was not the belief that its work could effect social change, as is generally surmised, but that its members—predominantly Jewish, working-class, and first-generation Americans living in a multi-ethnic city—were fascinated by the city’s composite nature and strongly identified with it.”

I always wonder how much of my admiration for images like these is due to nostalgia.